How to Do Ecommerce SEO: A Step-by-Step Workflow
Doing ecommerce SEO well means working through a specific sequence: audit and fix technical health first, map keywords to the right page types, restructure site architecture where needed, optimize category and product pages, build supporting content, then earn links and reviews to reinforce it all. Skipping the order — for example, writing blog content before your product pages are even indexable — is the most common reason store owners spend months on SEO and see nothing move.
- Step 1: Run a Full Technical and Indexation Audit
- Step 2: Map Keywords to the Right Page Type
- Step 3: Fix Site Architecture Before Writing Any Copy
- Step 4: Optimize Category Pages
- Step 5: Optimize Product Pages
- Step 6: Build Supporting Content for Research-Stage Searches
- Step 7: Earn Reviews, Mentions, and Links
- Step 8: Monitor, Iterate, Repeat
This workflow is the same one we run for new Salterra clients, whether it’s a 200-SKU boutique store or a catalog with tens of thousands of products. The steps don’t change with scale; only the depth of execution at each step does. Here’s the process from start to finish.
Step 1: Run a Full Technical and Indexation Audit
Before touching keywords or content, find out what search engines can actually see. Pull Google Search Console’s Pages report and sort by indexing status. Anything marked “Crawled — currently not indexed” or “Discovered — currently not indexed” is invisible in search no matter how good the content is, and on ecommerce sites this list is often shockingly long.
Cross-reference that against a crawl of your own site using a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. You’re looking for a specific set of red flags: infinite filter/sort URLs being crawled and indexed, duplicate content across product variants (a shirt in five colors generating five near-identical pages with no canonical tag), broken internal links, orphaned pages with no internal links pointing to them at all, and a robots.txt or noindex tag accidentally blocking sections of the catalog. On more than one client audit we’ve found an entire subcategory silently noindexed by a theme setting nobody knew existed — a five-minute fix that unlocked thousands of dollars a month in lost organic revenue.
What to Prioritize From the Audit
- Fix any accidental noindex tags or robots.txt blocks on real product/category pages immediately — these are the highest-leverage fixes on the entire list.
- Canonicalize filtered and sorted URL variants back to the clean category URL.
- Set up canonical tags or redirects for duplicate product variants where the platform doesn’t handle it natively.
- Fix broken internal links and orphaned pages by adding them into category navigation or related-product modules.
Step 2: Map Keywords to the Right Page Type
Ecommerce keyword research is different from blog keyword research because every keyword needs to be assigned to a page type, not just a page. Broad category terms (“hiking boots”) map to category pages. Specific product terms (“Salomon X Ultra 4 review,” “Salomon X Ultra 4 size 11”) map to product pages. Comparison and research terms (“hiking boots vs trail runners,” “best hiking boots for wide feet”) map to buying-guide content that doesn’t exist yet on most stores and needs to be built.
The mistake we see constantly is a store trying to rank its homepage or a single product page for a broad category term. Search engines want a category page for a category query — fighting that with the wrong page type wastes months. Build a simple spreadsheet: keyword, monthly search volume, intent (informational/commercial/transactional), and target page (existing URL or “needs to be created”). This becomes the backbone of every step that follows.
Step 3: Fix Site Architecture Before Writing Any Copy
If the keyword map reveals categories that don’t exist yet, or a structure where products sit five clicks deep from the homepage, fix that before optimizing page copy — you don’t want to write great content for a page structure you’re about to rebuild. Aim for a shallow hierarchy: homepage to top-level category to subcategory to product, ideally no more than three clicks deep for any product that matters commercially.
This is also where you decide how filtered navigation will be handled. The two workable approaches are AJAX filtering that doesn’t generate new crawlable URLs at all, or generating real indexable URLs only for filter combinations with genuine search demand (like “blue running shoes” if that has volume) while canonicalizing everything else back to the parent category. What doesn’t work is letting every filter combination generate an indexable URL — that’s the crawl-budget and duplicate-content problem that causes most large stores’ indexation issues in the first place.
Step 4: Optimize Category Pages
Category pages get optimized before individual products because they carry more traffic potential per page and because they’re the internal-linking hubs that pass authority down to products. For each priority category, write genuine introductory copy — a few paragraphs, not two throwaway sentences — that answers what the category is, who it’s for, and how to choose within it, targeting the primary keyword naturally in the first sentence or two.
Add structured internal links to subcategories and top-performing or highest-margin products, implement BreadcrumbList and ItemList schema, and make sure title tags and meta descriptions are unique across every category (not templated with just the category name swapped in, which search engines increasingly treat as low-value duplication).
Step 5: Optimize Product Pages
With category pages handling broad intent, product pages can focus tightly on the specific product. Write unique descriptions — this is non-negotiable and it’s the step most stores skip because it doesn’t scale as easily as copying manufacturer feeds. For a large catalog, prioritize by revenue: optimize your top 20% of products by sales or margin first, since that’s where unique content pays back fastest, then work down the list.
- Unique product description covering use case, materials/specs, and what makes it different from similar items in your own catalog.
- Product schema markup with price, availability, and aggregate rating so search results can show rich snippets.
- Genuine customer reviews, which double as fresh, unique content and as a trust signal.
- Clear specification tables or lists (materials, dimensions, compatibility) that answer pre-purchase questions directly on the page.
Step 6: Build Supporting Content for Research-Stage Searches
Buying guides, comparison articles, and how-to content capture searchers who aren’t ready to buy yet but will be soon. This content should link directly into the category and product pages it supports — a “best trail running shoes for beginners” guide should link to the trail running category and to two or three specific products, passing authority forward and giving research-stage visitors a clear next step.
This is also where topical authority compounds. A store with fifteen genuinely useful guides around its core categories signals expertise to both search engines and AI answer engines in a way that product pages alone never can.
Step 7: Earn Reviews, Mentions, and Links
Off-site signals still matter for ecommerce, arguably more than for content sites, because commercial queries get extra scrutiny. Prioritize collecting genuine customer reviews (on-site and on Google Business Profile if you have any physical presence), pursuing coverage or mentions from niche publications and bloggers who’d genuinely recommend your products, and fixing any broken backlinks pointing to old URLs that no longer exist.
Step 8: Monitor, Iterate, Repeat
SEO workflows aren’t linear-once. Revisit the technical audit quarterly (new filter combinations and duplicate content creep back in as catalogs grow), track keyword rankings and organic revenue by page type so you know whether category or product optimization is driving results, and feed that data back into which pages get the next round of attention. We run this cycle continuously for retained clients rather than treating it as a one-time project, because catalogs change constantly — new products, discontinued items, seasonal category shifts — and each change can quietly reopen problems Step 1 already fixed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the correct order to do ecommerce SEO in?
Technical audit and indexation fixes first, then keyword-to-page mapping, then architecture, then category page optimization, then product pages, then supporting content, then off-site signals. Doing content or link building before fixing indexation issues wastes the effort because the pages you're promoting may not even be indexed.
Should I optimize category pages or product pages first?
Category pages first. They typically target higher-volume keywords, serve as internal-linking hubs for the products beneath them, and there are far fewer of them than products, so the effort-to-impact ratio is better.
How many products should I optimize at once?
Start with your top 15-20% by revenue or margin rather than trying to rewrite an entire catalog at once. This gets the highest-value pages performing sooner and gives you a template to apply to the rest of the catalog over time.
Do I need a content strategy for an ecommerce site, or just product pages?
Both. Product and category pages capture buyers who already know what they want; supporting content (guides, comparisons) captures researchers earlier in the funnel and builds the topical authority that helps every other page rank.
How often should I redo the technical audit?
At minimum quarterly, and after any major catalog change, platform update, or theme change. New filter combinations, discontinued products, and plugin updates are common sources of indexation problems creeping back in.
Terry has 30+ years in software and SEO. He’s the founder of Salterra Digital Services and SEO Spring Training, host of the Roundtable SEO Mastermind, and lead instructor at SEO University — teaching the exact tactics his team uses on client work.
Continue learning
Ready to master this?
This guide is one lesson from the eCommerce SEO Optimization course. Get every lesson, framework and checklist — plus the full 38-course catalog — inside SEO University.
Practitioner-focused training across the full digital marketing stack — from technical SEO to conversion optimization and the AI search era. By Salterra Digital Services, since 2011.